“As a result, unless the rule is overturned, we Catholics will be compelled either to violate our consciences, or to drop health coverage for our employees (and suffer the penalties for doing so),” Gregory said in the letter. “The administration’s sole concession was to give our institutions one year to comply.”

Don’t know. I haven’t a clue what her position on abortion is (because honestly I don’t care what anyone’s position on abortion is), or whether she was involved with this decision or not.

What I do know is that the grants Komen was providing to PP were all for breast cancer exams and breast cancer-related information. None of the money was ever used for any products or activities related to providing abortions.

So basically, in order to give Planned Parenthood a black eye for providing abortions, pro-life activists instead decide to attack funding for medical examinations that have absolutely nothing to do with abortion. Makes complete sense. 0_O

Forecast to go down. It is not yet reality. The only difference between our current insane levels of overspending (if deficit projections come true for the first time ever) and previous slightly more insane levels of overspending is the few extra seconds before we go over the cliff.

Could it go up any more? It seems to me that it’s flat-lined, and trillion dollar deficits from here until the forseeable future portends for fiscal ruin. I don’t see how any sane person can deny that.

In a $3.8 trillion budget, a deficit that is $300b less than the previous year (when the previous deficit was $1.3 trillion) isn’t all that much to brag about.

It’s like an individual who consisently makes $26k a year, but spends $38k each year bragging that he is only going to spend $35k this year. Yes, the deficit is less, but the problem is nowhere near getting better.

You’re not going to wipe out a trillion dollar deficit overnight, but any serious effort could get the total deficit back to $300-400b range fairly easily, if political grandstanding weren’t a problem.

Congressman Broun, please explain:
– “I urge the President to reconsider all of the benefits of building the pipeline, and to make the rational decision that will expand our energy resources, protect our national security interests”
How does building that pipeline expand our energy resources and protect our national security?

I don’t know how to break it to you, but pipelines are a means to expand our available energy resources. They work pretty good, and tend to reduce the price of gas at the pump – which is a thing that concerns a lot of us voters out here.

Sending Chinese owned oil through a Canadian owned pipeline to a US port so that it can be loaded onto presumably foreign ships doesn’t seem like it would expand our available energy resources very much.

Unless the US adopts a comprehensive nuclear energy policy that drastically reduces the red tape delays and uncertainty caused by regulations, any oil related issue is going to be moot in short order. The cost of extraction for tertiary fields approaches the price of oil.

Our oil based economy is well into diminishing returns as US remains stuck in an underlying economic disadvantage. Until we begin glassifying nuke waste and sending it to the parts of Yucca Mountain ‘greenies’ admit are safe, we cannot break loose of paying our enemies $2Bn a DAY to ride, package, and type on the American way. (Your PC is oil based.)

SB31, debated here vigorously, is a direct result of the uncertainty and lengthy delays imposed unwieldy regulations, ill-defined National policy, and a populist, yet irrational fear of nuclear power.

It would provide Canadian oil that could replace Venezuelan oil. Both are bitumen and the refineries in Houston are the only refineries in North America that can refine it. That’s why the pipeline goes to Houston . If it were going to China the pipeline would go to Vancouver.
Houston is also the beginning point of many refined products pipelines. That includes the Colonial Pipeline that supplies gasoline, diesel and jet fuel to most of Georgia.
( The Savannah area is supplied by ship)
Here’s a map of north american pipelineshttp://www.theodora.com/pipelines/north_america_pipelines_map.jpg
Red lines are natural gas, green crude oil,and blue refined products.
There are also lines for ammonia and CO2

“It would provide Canadian oil”.
Please explain how that works. Because it is refined here it stays here? Do US distributors have some sort of priority dibs on the oil? Don’t they still have to bid on it? Can’t the owner- who extracted the oil- sell it to whomever they want? Isn’t it true that China already owns a substantial percentage of the oil this pipeline is designed to move? If the owner of the oil wants it for themselves, they don’t have to offer it to anyone.

“PetroChina and other Chinese state oil giants, including China Petroleum & Chemical Corp (Sinopec) and CNOOC Ltd have been scouring the world for reserves to fuel China’s rapidly-growing economy.

“Shale gas and oil sands assets in North America have been a focus in the past year as Chinese companies seek operational experience in the relatively frontier area.

“CNOOC completed a C$2.1 billion ($2.04 billion) acquisition of Opti Canada Ltd in November, giving China’s top offshore oil company its second stake in a Canadian oil sands property.

“China Petrochemical Corp, parent of Sinopec, signed a deal to buy Canadian oil and gas explorer Daylight Energy Ltd for C$2.2 billion ($2.1 billion) in October.

There are right wing articles and an inside advice letter circulating with the oil companies that the XL pipeline is a poor hill to die on for the Republicans….the beneficiaries are a lot of money to be made by a few, not the reasons represented.